Check out this alert on the University of Buffalo's website:

UBIT Alert
Campus Wide Services Impacted
VoIP System Maintenance

Effective: 8/6/2008 Expires: 8/6/2008 Posted: 2008-08-04

On Wednesday, 8/6, between 6:00 - 7:00 AM system maintenance will be performed on the VoIP server infrastructure. Technical staff will be updating web security certificates.

During the system maintenance window, users will experience a momentary interruption of approximately 5 minutes during which user configurable features will not be available for modification.

Should a situation exist where this might seriously restrict your ability to conduct business, please contact us so that we can reschedule this work.

For more information contact oss-unix (oss-unix@buffalo.edu), 645-5367

I just hope there isn't a campus shooting or something like that. How would campus personnel be able to broadcast emergency messages to your VoIP phone in your dorm room? There's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Or what if some other major emergency happens on campus, like you know, you've got the major munchies or you want to order a pizza? Now that's really a lawsuit waiting to happen! Don't believe lawsuits can happen over not being able to order pizza using VoIP? Just go take a gander at Vonage IPO Lawsuit and my Lawsuit over my Cold Pizza.

Thought I'd share a photo of my Labrador/Shepherd mix named Jessie. It's not often I shoot in black & white (B&W) but I thought this photo came out pretty well. She's yellow... in case you were wondering.

TMC's Biggest Loser contest just ended today. First, congratulations to Alan Urkawich for winning TMC's contest who lost 36.4 pounds and 15.4% & took the $375 prize. However, if you recall, I wasn't allowed to join TMC's competition, so I made a one-way $100 bet of my own that I could beat all 5 contestants. My wife told me "Don't come home if you have to pay $100 to anyone. What are you doing making one-way bets anyway? You had nothing to gain. That's just stupid!"

I told her "pride" but she already knew my answer since she's quite familiar with my pride & ego. Well, fortunately my wallet stays fatter, my waist thinner, and my pride & ego just as big as ever since I beat all 5 TMC contestants!

Not only did I beat them percentage-wise, but I also beat each of them in total pounds lost. My final weigh-in was 160lbs, which was a 38 pound loss, besting Alan by 1.6lbs. Mind you, my starting weight was less than all 5 contestants since I was the smallest guy. So while I was confident I would be them percentage-wise, I wasn't so sure I could beat the bigger guys in total pounds loss. Well, I guess I get double-bragging rights!

Thanks for playing, come again.

Now that I technically won $375, I think I'm going reward myself with a Playstation3, since I've been wanting a Blu-ray DVD player for some time now anyway.

Here's the final tally: (Rich hasn't weighed in, but he hasn't been losing much weight and wasn't in the running.)

	Original Weight	Final Weight	Pounds Lost	Percentage Lost
Tom	198	160	38	19.19%
Alan	236	199.6	36.4	15.42%
Dave	253.8	226.2	27.6	10.87%
Tim	293.8	262.6	31.2	10.62%
Joe	247.6	233	14.6	5.90%
Rich	230	?	?	?

In 1999, I wrote a humorous article for CTI Magazine, the precursor to Internet Telephony Magazine, about my adventures with a power outage at TMC that took out our Dialogic MSI analog cards in our PC-PBX. The MSI cards are responsible for providing ring voltage to the phones, but the quick power outage blew the ring voltage generators on the cards resulting in phones that wouldn't ring on an incoming call.

OUT OF THE BLUE — A BOLT OF BLUE
Rather than working on the Dialogic boards during work hours, I decided to come in on a Sunday, when incoming phone traffic would be minimal. Then, I would be free to pull out both Dialogic boards and replace them with the new boards Artisoft had sent me.

While pulling out one of the faulty boards, I saw a blue arc of electric current, half an inch long, pass between the two boards! Since the boards were so close together, a soldering pin on one of the boards must have touched the other board. “Well,” I thought to myself, “if it wasn’t broken before, it’s definitely broken now!” I had that odd, giddy sensation you sometimes get when you think you may have destroyed something expensive.

Dialogic explained they had some issues with the BlackBox ring voltage generators and that they solved the issue, but not before I nearly fried myself.

Well, I bring this all up because I just came across a great article from the Michigan Telephone, VoIP, and Broadband Blog...

This is the Biggest Loser Finale results week. Hopefully, you've been keeping track of my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition and enjoying my weekly updates. Here's a recap:

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).
Week 10 (March 17th) - weighed in at 174lbs (-6 lbs).
Week 11 (March 24th) - weighed in at 174lbs (0 change).

This week (finale):
Week 12 (March 31st) - weighed in at 170lbs (-4 lbs).

I worked my tail off this weekend, including a 3.5 hour workout on Saturday that included over 5 miles on the treadmill as well as weight training. The gym owner noticing my lengthy workout commented "You've been here almost 4 hours? You really want to win the free gym membership, don't you?"

Well, as of 3pm today, everyone has weighed in for the final time. And the winner is...

[drumroll please]
...
...
...

I won the gym's Biggest Loser contest with a 14.14% percentage loss and 28lbs! My wife came from behind to tie for 2nd place with a 9.6% loss, which means the Keating family dominated The Biggest Loser contest. Too bad this wasn't The Biggest Loser Couples.

Ok, and now the Final Top 6 Leaderboard (15 total contestants):

1) TOM 28 lbs lost = 14.14%
2) NICOLE (18 lbs lost) and JOAN (14 lbs lost) = 9.6%
3) KIM 19 lbs lost = 7.7%
4) SHAWN 11.5 lbs lost = 6.7%
5) MARY 10 lbs lost = 4.7%
6) ERIN 7.75 lbs lost = 4.4%

Not only did I win 1st prize (free 1-year gym membership), but my wife and I were on the same team with 3 other players and we also won the "team prize" ($50 AMEX gift card) since we had the largest percentage loss as a team as seen here:

Team Leaderboard by Trainer:
Team One Lisa's Team (includes Nicole, me, and 3 others): 7.6%
Team Two Sally's Team: 3.9%
Team Three Danielle's Team: 2.9%

But it's not over... While the gym Biggest Loser competition is over, the race goes on. I still have to win the TMC Biggest Loser competition which ends May 1st. Reminds me of a famous scene in Ben-Hur - one of the greatest movies of all time - where Messala tells Judah Ben-Hur that the battle is not over...

Ben-Hur: Where are they? Where are they? (shouting) Where are they?
Messala: (vengefully) Look for them in the Valley of the Lepers, if you can recognize them. (grabbing Judah's clothing) It goes on. It goes on, Judah. The race, the race is not over.

Continuing my updates for my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition, here's Week #11. Need I remind you that this this past week was a holiday weekend with Easter Sunday a couple days ago. I knew this was going to be a troublesome week for me since I was going to be visiting with family to celebrate Easter. This meant lots of tempting foods. In fact, I ate turkey, 9 pieces of cocktail shrimp, mashed potatoes with butter, corn, and a roll with butter. For dessert I had a couple thin mints, Carvel ice cream cake, chocolate mousse cheesecake with fudge frosting, and a piece of my wife's Easter Lemon Pie with homemade whipped cream. On top of it all, my wife got me a giant 1 foot tall chocolate Easter Bunny rabbit from Bridgewater Chocolate. I cannot resist chocolate. You think you're a chocoholic? The entire bunny's ears and head was gone in less than a day.

Now if you recall, in Week 7, I had a shoulder injury, but regardless I wasn't going to make any excuses for not losing weight. I said I wouldn't gain weight on any week. In Week 7 I wrote, "Anyway, even with the injury I'm hoping to lose at least 1lb per week. I may have a few 0 weight changes, but I'm hoping to never have a weight gain. Wish me luck!"

With my virtual guarantee I would not have a week with a weight gain you're probably wondering how the heck I could eat all that food, including 3 main desserts and a massive piece of chocolate and expect to not gain weight. (Mind you the weigh-in was the day after Easter.) Well, that's a damn good question!

I knew I would want to eat my favorite foods and desserts for Easter, so I did three things. One, I lowered my calories slightly last week. Two, I worked out like a mad man burning anywhere from 400-1000 calories per day in the gym. Third, I used mental motivation by watching & listening to inspiring music and videos this week. Specifically, I have on my Microsoft Zune movie clips from Rocky movies and some of the soundtrack songs.

One of my favorite inspiring movie clips is when Rocky faces Ivan Drago, the giant Russian in Rocky IV. Rocky, the much shorter fighter and of course the underdog had to use his will to overcome seemingly impossible odds.

Duke: [to Rocky] You see? You see? He's not a machine, he's a man, he's a man!
Drago: [to his own trainer] He's not human. He's like a piece of iron.


I kept telling myself I will not gain weight this week. I will not fail. Irish pride and ego certainly help. While I can't compare my workout ethic to Rocky, I certainly did push myself harder so I could eat what I wanted on Easter.

And the verdict? I weighed in at 173.75, a 1/4 pound loss!! Although the gym rounds up so I stayed at 174 pounds - the same as last week. I'm ecstatic I didn't gain weight, yet ate whatever I wanted.

Here's the full week-by-week recap followed by the Top 5 Leaderboard Standings:

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).
Week 10 (March 17th) - weighed in at 174lbs (-6 lbs).

This week:
Week 11 (March 24th) - weighed in at 174lbs (0 change).

Ok, and now the Top 5 Leaderboard:

1.) Tom/me 12.1% body weight lost (24 lbs)
2.) Joan 8.9% body weight lost (13.5 lbs)
3.) Nicole 8.3% body weight lost (15.5 lbs)
4.) Kim 8.1% body weight lost (20 lbs)
5.) Shawn 5.5% body weight lost (9.5 lbs)

This is the final week, with the final weigh-in taking place March 31st. Joan has been gaining on me and took the #2 spot from my wife, Nicole. Joan's starting weight was only 151, so all she needs to do is lose 5lbs this week and if I lose 0 she's actually beats me by 0.1%. This of course means I need to lose at least a couple pounds just to be safe and win the free year gym membership. I'm going to shoot for 4 pounds this week which will put me at 170lbs. If I can get one more pound and be at 169, I will be ecstatic. That would be >15% weight loss in just 11 weeks!

Wish me luck for this final run to the finish line!

Continuing my updates for my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition, here's Week #10.

Just to recap last week, I "threw the gauntlet down" against my fellow co-workers who were running their own Biggest Loser contest. I did a one way $100 bet against all 5 players that I could beat their weight percentage lost.

One of the players who we'll call "J" emailed me, "You threw it down and I just picked it up! Your $100 beans is all mine!"

Now that's the kind of smack talk I need to get my butt in gear and lose some more weight!

As for the other players, one player whom we'll call "D" sounded quite confident he could beat me. He asked my starting weight and my goal weight. He's a much bigger guy than I am so he can certainly lose more pounds than me - the big question is can he beat my percentage. He seemed confident he could. Good luck with that Big D! Hey wait, that's a McDonald's sandwich!

Another player whom we'll call "T" was skeptical he could match my weight loss numbers. He said something to the effect of "It's much harder for me because I have to lose a lot more pounds than Tom does." I guess no $100 for him. Of course, he could be playing coy so I don't try as hard. As for the other 2 players "R" & "A" no comments so far.

In any event, here's this week's update including all previous 9 weeks for context. As I told some high school friends via email, I made them a "guarantee" I would lose at least 5 pounds or I would have to give up "something" that I would sorely miss. Fortunately, I knew I would lose at least 5 pounds this week because of the "new challenge" from my co-workers giving me new motivation. Nothing like a little inter-office rivalry to get my Irish pride going.

My weight loss this week? A whopping 6 pounds! As Emeril would say - BAM!! This is my largest weight loss since Week 2 where I lost 9 pounds. And now for my next prediction, I predict I will win the next Powerball even if the previous $275 million jackpot will reset to something puny - like $20 million. (Just kidding. I don't gamble.)

Here's the full week-by-week recap:

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).

This week:
Week 10 (March 17th) - weighed in at 174lbs (-6 lbs).

Erbert & Gerbert's, the Midwest sandwich shop that brought you humanflipbook.com, comes the world's most powerful air vortex cannon (www.candlecannon.com). Prepare to be amazed by this candle blowing air cannon. Yeah sure it's designed to blow out candles, but it could just as easily be aimed at unsuspecting victims on the street up to 180 feet away resulting in comments like,  "WTF was that?"

My sister Kellie owns and operates the Oxford Academy of Hair Design in Oxford, Connecticut where she is an instructor teaching and certifying beauticians. It's one of the best hairdressing schools in Connecticut I might add, but I'm biased - she is family after all.

Anyway, she informed me late last night that someone nearly poisoned her with Visine, which could have made my sister very sick, put her in a coma, or even death.

She writes:

So It looks like I won’t have much trouble getting traffic to my website now. I am in the Boston Globe, Ny Papers, all the CT papers, all the CT newstations and now people are creating blogs about this!!

This is Insane!

I guess she's famous now. Actually, her school has been featured on TV a few times. They even wanted to make a reality show based on her beauty school. After all, beauty schools are the perfect place for gossip, drama, drama queens, etc. Mr T. was involved but I believe it fell through. Too bad - can you imagine if the reality crew caught the Visine poisoning attempt on camera? Talk about ratings!

My sis' points me to this Google link featuring the Visine discussion on the Web:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=oxford+academy%2C+visine

Also, according to the Connecticut Post:

Seymour police say a student at a beauty school has been accused of putting Visine eye drops in the water bottle of an instructor.

Twenty-two-year-old Olga Louniakova of East Haven has been charged with reckless endangerment, threatening and criminal attempt to commit an assault.

Seymour police say Louniakova allegedly put the drops in the water bottle of an instructor who teaches at the Oxford Academy for Hair Design.

Investigators say Louniakova had a problem with another student at the school and had intended to put the solution in that person's bottle.

Police say the eye drop solution can lower body temperatures to dangerous levels, make breathing difficult, and bring on nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, seizures and even coma.

What does Yahoo Answers! say about ingesting Visine?

The active ingredient in Visine eye drops is Tetrahydrozoline HCl 0.05%. Swallowing this substance can result in a number of nasty effects, including:

* Lowering body temperature to dangerous levels
* Making breathing difficult, or even halting it entirely
* Blurring vision
* Causing nausea and vomiting
* Elevating and then dropping blood pressure
* Causing seizures or tremors
* Sending the ingester into a coma

Yikes! Even a small amount can be dangerous. Apparently, the intended prank was inspired by the movie "Wedding Crashers" where Owen Wilson puts Visine in the glass to give diarrhea.

Well sis, I'm just glad you're OK. Here's some pics of my sister and her school:

My Sister Kellie to the far left in front of her Oxford Academy of Hair Design business. Apparently the guy in the middle is some famous guy - David Guliano from Sexy Hair.


My sister (left) with some of her hairdressing students I believe.

Continuing my updates for my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition, here's Week #9.

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).

No change this week, which I expected since I had a 12-day cold and couldn't do any cardio. I was also losing a little bit of my motivation to continue to strive to lose weight since I'm in 1st place for the gym's Biggest Loser competition and I'm close to my goal weight of 175 lbs.

However, I have found a new motivation to lose more weight. A few days ago, a coworker was by my desk and I commented how he looked great from all his weight loss. He mentioned he lost 25 lbs from his participation in TMC's Biggest Loser competition. I thought about joining TMC's Biggest Loser competition as well, but it started 1-2 weeks after my gym's Biggest Loser competition and I didn't really need another contest to motivate myself. Besides, my gym is offering a free year's gym membership which is worth about $800, so that was also a huge motivating factor. I just assumed TMC's Biggest Loser competition with 5 contestants was just for "pride". It was then that my coworker mentioned it was a $75 buy-in to play. Nothing like 5 x $75 = $375 to motivate me even more to lose weight! So I told my coworker I'd like to play as well and he was game to having me join. He was kicking butt himself with his 25lb weight loss and no doubt he thought he'd be taking my $75 as part of his winnings.

A few hours later, he came back to tell me some of the other players didn't want me to play. Bummer. I started around the same time and was willing to have my final weigh-in end date be 1-2 weeks earlier since I started earlier. I know 3 out of the 5 contestants read my blog regularly, so no doubt they saw my Biggest Loser blog updates and saw how well I was doing. I obviously scared them off. No wonder none of them invited me to play when they started their competition after I started mine.

I was looking forward to some inter-office rivalry and collecting my $375 (+ $75 of my money), but alas it was not to be. But that's OK if some don't want me to play, because I'm going to play anyway. No, not for the money pot they're offering, since I can't get in on that. Nope, instead I'm going to offer my own inter-office bet. I'm going to bet each of the 5 TMC participants $100 that I can beat their total body percentage weight loss. If I don't beat a particular person they get $100, but if I do beat a particular person they don't have to pay me anything. It's a one-way bet. This means I could potentially lose $500 if they all beat me.

The gauntlet has been laid.

Oh and to quote Ivan Drago from Rocky IV who said to Apollo Creed - "You will lose"... (video of this quote below)